‘His House’: Film Review

04 February 2020

by Jessica Kiang

Variety

Out of the frying pan, through the fire and into the hellish, demonic inferno of British low-income public housing. For husband-and-wife Sudanese refugees Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku), every stage of their journey from their war-torn African village hometown to the dehumanizing limbo of a U.K. detention center via a perilous ocean crossing that claims the life of their little girl, seems progressively more fraught than the last. But in writer-director Remi Weekes’ debut feature, , it’s the final move — the one that should at last deliver them from evil — that cues the greatest evil of all.

Beautifully played by Dirisu and Mosaku, who bring a grounded, emotional sureness to the depiction of a real marriage crumbling under the most surreal of circumstances, the couple arrive at their newly billeted council house with hopeful hearts. And though the ugly home, shown to them with casual brusqueness by